Connor McDavid's contract dilemma: get paid his value or take a bullet for the team?

If McDavid signs for maximum contract, Oilers fans should celebrate. But he may yet pull a Crosby ….

Under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, it’s not possible for the Edmonton Oilers to overpay Connor McDavid.

McDavid could get the maximum amount of $15 million over 8 years and he’s such a unique player that he’d still be underpaid. A player who adds as much to winning as McDavid does would fetch a killing on an open market. It’s easy to imagine some team offering him $20 million or $25 million a year if there was no salary cap. That’s closer to his real value to an NHL owner.

So the first fact of this contract negotiation between McDavid and the Oilers is that if McDavid takes anything less than the maximum contract, he’s taking a hometown discount.

If he settles at $10 or $11 million or $12 million, he’s taking a major one. He would be giving up millions on his contract.

Who would do such a thing? Well, Sidney Crosby in Pittsburgh did, but few others.

The current negotiation isn’t about whether McDavid will be paid what he’s worth, it will be a choice that McDavid makes between how much salary he wants and how much he wants the team itself to have left-over for other players in a strict salary cap system.

If McDavid takes the 20 per cent of the cap he’s entitled to take and is surely worth, that would leave 80 per cent for the other 22 roster players. After other top players such as Leon Draisaitl, Milan Lucic, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Andrej Sekera, Kris Russell, Adam Larsson, Cam Talbot and Oscar Klefbom, get paid their $40-plus million, if McDavid were to take the maximum, there would leave $23 million under the current $75 million cap to pay the remaining 13 other players. That’s going to be a tight fit with players like Patrick Maroon, Drake Caggiula, Darnell Nurse, Jesse Puljujarvi and Matt Benning all needing new contracts in coming years.

If McDavid follows in the path of a superstar like Crosby and takes millions less than he’s worth, it will be that much easier for the Oilers to compete.

On the Pulp Hockey Show, former NHL scoring ace Ray Ferraro dug into the issue with host Steve Matthes.

TSN’s Darren Dreger reported there are whispers it’s going to be $14 million for McDavid, and Ferraro talked about that number making sense. “If McDavid and his camp feel that $14 million is the number they have to have, and if you’re Edmonton you’re really kind of stuck, you have to pay somewhere around there, well, if Oilers fans didn’t like the Eberle deal, guess what? There’s going to be about four more of them.”

Ferraro was referring to Jordan Eberle and his $6 million per contract being traded on salary cap dump, being moved for a cheaper and less player in Ryan Strome.

If McDavid takes the maximum, the Oilers are going to have to find a cheap source of players. “When you hear about drafting a development, it’s so you can have players who are affordable around those giant contracts,” Ferraro says.

Ferraro said the Oilers would counter-offer if McDavid is asking for $14 million and could make the following statement: “I would say just take a look what you see in Chicago and be ready. It’s not that we’re threatening anything. Reality is if you’re making 14 bones, then we’ve got a problem, but we’ve got to fill out a roster.”

McDavid could take less money and go from $14 million to closer to $10 million per after escrow “which is still a crazy amount of money” but he’d be giving up around $28 to $32 million over eight years. “Crap that is a lot of money,” Ferraro said. “Crosby has left millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars on the table with an $8.7 deal. If Jonathan Toews is making $10.5, Crosby needs to be making more than that, and I don’t think there’s any debate.”

Bottom lines?

If McDavid signs the maximum contract of eight years at $15 million per, the Edmonton Oilers and their fans should be ecstatic. They are locking up a player who will do more to contribute to winning than any other NHL player on a bargain contract, way below what McDavid would really worth on an open market. You won’t catch me, at least, whining if McDavid signs for that amount. He has every right to do so.

If McDavid takes less than that amount, that will represent a fantastic sacrifice of dollars on his part, but will also indicate he’s made the calculation that for the Edmonton Oilers to have a better chance at winning, his taking less will send a powerful message to the rest of the roster about not going for every last dollar in negotiations so that the entire group might win more Stanley Cups. Of course, his taking less money will also free up more money to sign other good players.

In the end, if McDavid does take a hometown discount and the Oilers do win more Stanley Cups, there’s a chance he could recoup some of the money he’s lost on his contract. Nothing sells better to the public than a champion, and especially a champion who is willing to sacrifice for the collective good of his team.

What would pulling a Crosby look like? It’s difficult to say, given the difference circumstances upon which Crosby signed his second contract. For example, it’s a challenge to factor in what Crosby and the Penguins knew about the cap and how it might rise going forward. Crosby’s second contract, a five year deal, was $8.7 million per. He signed it in July 2007, when the cap was at $50.3 million. The next year, when the contract kicked in, the cap went up to $56.7 million, though that increase in the cap would not have been known to Crosby or the Penguins when they inked the deal. They would have both expected some increase in the cap, but perhaps not a hefty $6.3 million increase. Based on the $50.3 million figure, Crosby’s contract was 17.3 per cent of he cap. Based on the $56.7 million figure, it was 15.3 per cent of the cap.

If McDavid were to sign a contract similar to Crosby’s second contract, it would be $12.98 million per based on the 17.3 per cent figure and $11.48 mill0in per based on the 15.3 per cent figure. Crucially, both contracts would be over five years, not eight.

Me, I would be happy at $15 million for McDavid. At $11.5 million to $13.0 million per for five-to-eight years, that is a doing cartwheels day. At $10 million per for five years, that would represent a massive, massive, massive hometown discount.

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